How's the beaver, Mrs. Cleaver?
Yah... I have 5 seriously leaning white oaks here that I need to remove from the creek area after their roots were undercut in the floods in December. However, the Girlfriend has the creek area leased to the Fed for CREP (Coho slamon habitat). We have to have a Fed person come out and review the trees before I can cut them. May have to get a permit, and leave the trees in the creek bed for habitat (I wood rather cut and burn them in the OWB). However, they did pay for the fencing along the creek to keep our sheep out, and they paid for the trees to plant in there. We planted 2,000 trees in a 5acre CREP area last winter here. Beavers seem to be bad or good, depending on whom you talk to. CREP they are good. Watershead they are bad.
Water here is weird too. We do not have irrigation rights. We are supposed to let all the water run across the property... and into the creek and flood zones down creek. Put in a pond or spring box and thay are all over us. We have a several springs, but cannot use the water from them. Have a permit for one well and only one well for domestic use. Never mind that the whole county is basically flooded out and the water only runs into the ocean. Land ownership does not give you much around here other than limited land use and tax liability. Wildlife is protected. Water use is restricted. Development, building and splitting land parecels is impossible here. If you have trees and cut you pay taxes through the nose.
Another side issue here is that the previous owners high graded the trees here and did not pay the taxes. So the Girlfriend had an option; pay the taxes, sue the old owners, or replant under Rx forest plan. She went with the Rx forest plan. So we have a guy cruise the land once a year and Rx what needs thinned and what needs to be cut, and what to plant. They are pretty open to various planting themes, depending on the person you get to do the Rx. Most want us to plant monoculture Doug fir, as that is the highest value and tax base for them. We got a Calif. Black Oak restoration area set aside, as well as the CREP area. The Girlfriend also planted mixed species of trees here: giant seqoia, redwood, red cedar, ponderosa pine, doug fir, and grand fir. In CREP we planted red cedar, doug fir, red alder, oregon ash, 6 types of willows, cottonwood, white oak, bigleaf and vine maples.
But the elk, deer and beavers can and do whatever they want, whenever they want. The deer have eaten 1/3 of the trees that we planted. They leave little thank-you mounds of poopies next to the trees that they eat. This year I am getting a hunting tag though, and we can shoot two of anything that we want here... 2 elk are going to be in the freezer soon!
I saw one here last month in the creek. The Girlfriend says that they are bad. She is on the local watershead counsil and says that they can dam up the creek and make a mess of this place. 
